Is This The End of OMAC?!

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a guy named David Morris who wanted to send me a copy of, as he described it, a "bootleg final issue" that he did for a little series that ISB readers might be familiar with called OMAC.

It arrived today, and it is awesome.



Despite the fact that it was one of the most astonishingly radical comics of all time, OMAC lasted only eight issues, ending in a sudden cancellation and a half-hearted resolution in the final issue that could charitably be referred to as "unsatisfying." And that's where Morris and penciller Dek Baker come in with their mini-comic version of OMAC #9, picking up right where the last issue left off.

Or, to be more accurate, it picks up where the penultimate panel of #8 leaves off, since the actual last panel pretty much amounts to, as Morris says in his note at the end, "then there was a big explosion and it was all over. The end."

Instead, they kick things off for an incredibly entertaining full-length 22-page story that does everything right. The story's done in the exact same style as Kirby's OMAC: The pages are laid out in the six-panel grid, the chapters are all kicked off with a splash page, and there's even a double-page spread on pages two and three--depicting the agents of the Global Peace Agency surveying the wreckage of Brother Eye--to kick things off right.

Even better are Morris's chapter breaks, done in the same fantastic over-the-top style that marked the original, like the one that leads into Chapter Two:

WHO ARE YOU?! What makes you you? What is the difference between a hero and a heel?
Questions of identity assume new and disturbing significance in The World That's Coming! That world will stand or fall depending on the answer to one such question...

WHO IS BUDDY BLANK?!

Tell me that's not awesome and I will call you a liar.

The story itself concerns Buddy Blank--reverted from his form as OMAC by the apparent destruction of Brother Eye--being held at the mercy of Dr. Skuba, the mad eco-terrorist who stole all the water in the world in the final issues of OMAC, being faced with monsters, torture, and a girl named Seaweed.

As you might expect, the GPA eventually sends a guy with an icepick out into space to fix Brother Eye, and Buddy becomes OMAC once again, and proceeds to wreck everything in sight, as is his habit:



It's exactly the kind of finish the book needed, and Morris and Baker do a much better job "getting Kirby right" than Neil Gaiman did with Eternals, and all in the span of one black-and-white mini-comic.

Plus, this is the back cover:



You can contact David Morris at baronblack[at]blueyonder[dot]co[dot]uk to get your own, and trust me: You should.